Guild Wars 2

I have several ideas for each weaponskill on the hammer, and I think implementing any of them would make the hammer feel more responsive, rewarding, and satisfying to use.

Backbreaker could cleave, have a shorter cooldown (15-20s), do more damage, or apply the weakness/cripple from the 2 skill. I think implementing any one or two ideas from that list would make it a fantastic skill. I don’t advocate lowering the cast time, I think that that makes for a very flashy skill that is both satisfying to land and interesting to play against. It’s clearly telegraphed as a dangerous skill, so the warrior should be rewarded for landing it and the enemy should be rewarded for avoiding it. Personally, due to the largely AoE nature of the hammer, I’m inclined to prefer a cleaving backbreaker as a change, for more AoE control.

Staggering Blow could have a shorter cast time, be used on the move, have a longer knockback, or have a lower cooldown. I think this skill could benefit greatly in a spec designed to cause havoc among multiple enemies, especially in WvW. You would run directly at the enemies like a maniac, swinging your hammer around you, knocking people around like ragdolls. I don’t like the idea of increasing the damage, I like the idea of hammer being something similar to the Rampage elite – rather than being directly powerful, you focus on causing chaos on the battlefield. Being mobile while casting would aid this skill greatly and would be much more fun to use, even if the cast time stayed the same.

I don’t have many suggestions for skill 3 – I think it’s a boring skill that attempts to counter the weakness of the melee nature of the kit. Besides the F1 skill, there aren’t any easy ways to close the distance with your enemy, and the cripple does fit into the AoE control theme of the weapon rather nicely.

For hammer 2, I strongly advocate reworking this skill, perhaps replacing it entirely. What I suggest is working the weakness of this skill into Backbreaker, which would simultaneously free up a new interesting skill slot while making Backbreaker a more valuable skill, especially in comparison to OH mace’s Tremor. I honestly don’t think there is space on a kit for two attacks that pretty much only deal one condition with no secondary effects such as cc or high damage. Therefore, my suggestion is to replace the 2 skill with yet another control attack.

Hammer in GW1 had a skill called Belly Smash, which was a followup attack. If it hit a knocked-down enemy, all nearby foes were blinded by the dust cloud. If the enemy was not knocked-down, it failed. So, my suggestion for the new attack would be this:

Belly Smash
(XX Damage)
(1/2 second cast)
This skill does x% more damage to knocked down and stunned foes. If this skill hits a foe who is knocked down or stunned, all nearby foes are blinded.

This skill would make for a fantastic followup to backbreaker and the F1 adrenal skill. It stays true to the AoE nature of the weapon, would be a unique, satisfying mechanic that isn’t just “this attack applies damage and a condition.” It also provides counterplay. As a combination attack, it punishes enemies who get hit and stay on the ground, but enemies who dodge the CC and enemies who stunbreak will be safe from the followup attack and the blind. Despite being a combination attack, it would also function decently on its own, as a quick damaging attack.

I believe the autoattack is fine, although I think the chain could cause some kind of condition or blast finisher. Most autoattacks provide some form of utility, either through finishers or conditions. Hammer is an exception, and it could apply weakness or cause blast finishers to make the autoattack more interesting. However, the autoattack is of much less concern to me than the rest of the kit.

In the end, this is the kind of synergy and thought process that I believe makes certain kits fun and other kits stagnant. You can apply this thought process to any other kit, too: Does the kit have synergy with itself, do the skills make sense? Is it balanced compared to other options the class has, and options other classes have? Does it have and follow a theme? Is it fun to play? And is it fun to play against? I asked myself all these questions and that led me to believe that the current 2 and 4 skills are of questionable use and the 5 skill of hammer does not feel especially rewarding to land. Hammer 5 is also outclassed by some other CC abilities such as Tremor, and does not stay true to the AoE nature of the rest of the kit. Finally, the 2 and 3 skills do not do much and are boring to use, due to having singular mechanics that do not synergize well. The suggestions I made would solve all of the problems I mentioned.

I was gona do a hammer buff thread but seeing you have beat me to it il just suggest here.

Your ideas are good but warrior dosent need a 2 handed mace man. We already got lost of weapons that end up being support or abusing the crutch cond dmg is atm. The hammers is ment to be about control and high dmg from stunned targets and it should build up upon that.

Heres my take on it:
Auto attack is fine but the last hit should do some nize dmg.

Fierce blow should become a blow out attack with same dmg as first hit from auto.

hammer shock should continue the cripple but if it hits targets that are stunned it should blind them get its dmg pushed up to first hit from auto.

Staggering blow needs a huge redoning. It could be redone to the attack the champion of heavy hammer does. The Aoe hammer whirl that knocks ppl back. It would have less dmg then auto but not too little and be able to knock targets back in the path you go exactly like the heavy hammer npc.

Backbreaker needs to get its CD to 20 and swing a bit faster.

Idk if its just me or earthshaker does crap dmg now but the with the trait for hammer+10% more on bleedng targets+weakend targets= 40% more dmg but it does 4k-5k LOL My GS rush does 4k with no buffs…

Then i think we can see more smex hammers on the killing fields.

Hammer is really good in wvw and it will never become the best weapon in pve because it has cc instead of pure damage. Earthshaker, #3 and #4 all hit 5 targets and have strong cc effects while #2 applies weakness which is one of the strongest conditions. The damage coefficients are pretty high on every single skill which is why the attack animations are slow. You can counter blind by using condition removal just before you land your slow earthshaker or staggering blow. If hammer was buffed, warriors would become way too powerful in wvw. A good hammerstun can change a fight alone already.

I’d buff Backbreaker differently: increase knockdown duration, true to the gw1 backbreaker.
Last hit of auto attack needs a special effect, blast finisher is the obvious choice.
All the other hammer attacks are fine imo, I suppose hammer 2 is indeed kinda boring.

Have you ever looked at the hammer’s 3rd chain attack? it has a HUGE radius and it looks like it could be at least 600 units where it throws up a little dust ring :o and theres a little “blast” animation as soon as the hammer strikes the ground…maybe it should be made into a blast finisher. but that could be a little op…
Id like if shockwave #3 did a 1 sec knockdown or knockback along with cripple…

Making staggering blow usable whilst moving I see would be the easiest to implement since there’s already a moving whirling animation the guardians whirling wrath.

WvWvW meta for organized zergs since Autumn 2012 have been hammer warriors. Almost any top gvg team has more hammer warriors than any other build in this game!

Buffing them even more would be like the most stupid idea ever. The amount of hard CC, stuns, knockdowns from a large force of lots of such hammer warriors is ridiculous. Without stability your character will be just a ping pong ball and downed in 1-2 seconds.

Adding longer knockdown, more conditions, larger area, faster animation or damage to an already super overpowered zerg weapon is never a good idea. We got traits like these:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Unsuspecting_Foe

Which gives +50% increased critical chance against stunned foes.

Now imagine a good group hammer warriors, who can sync their area stuns (earth shaker, aka hammer burst). One area stun after after another chained, so that the area where they hit has permanent stun (as the burst skill recharges roughly 10 second). Each warrior dishing their hits with 100% critical hit rate. That is already happening and you want more!?!?

Deniara Devious.3948:

WvWvW meta for organized zergs since Autumn 2012 have been hammer warriors. Almost any top gvg team has more hammer warriors than any other build in this game!

Buffing them even more would be like the most stupid idea ever. The amount of hard CC, stuns, knockdowns from a large force of lots of such hammer warriors is ridiculous. Without stability your character will be just a ping pong ball and downed in 1-2 seconds.

Adding longer knockdown, more conditions, larger area, faster animation or damage to an already super overpowered zerg weapon is never a good idea. We got traits like these:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Unsuspecting_Foe

Which gives +50% increased critical chance against stunned foes.

Now imagine a good group hammer warriors, who can sync their area stuns (earth shaker, aka hammer burst). One area stun after after another chained, so that the area where they hit has permanent stun (as the burst skill recharges roughly 10 second). Each warrior dishing their hits with 100% critical hit rate. That is already happening and you want more!?!?

this issue with an overabundance of hammer trains in wvw stems from the stagnant meta, and lack of innovation. less so from game balance.

people run hammer trains because it’s easy, and organizing an counter is hard. but the current game allows for hammer trains to be countered without running a hammer train yourself.

The devs are going to make staggering strike maybe a movile skill in the next balance patch, im not 100% certain but they said it in a video, also i think hammer is already one of the best weapons warriors have i fail to see the bad things on the weapon aside from staggering strike.

Increase the recovery time on all hammer attacks by 0.25.

“1-3 chain” Make it a blast finisher with a larger radius, you say that is OP but thieves short-bow is three blast finishers every 1.5 seconds, and it seems fine, maybe it could use a damage increase as well. This could also be the same cast time as the other two skills to keep consistency but also be the same damage as the other two as well as compensation.

“2” – Leave it how it is, except change the animation to be more satisfying, it looks like your uppercutting them with the hammer… weird. I would rather have a pommel strike or something. Maybe taking the Pommel and bashing the person in the knee. Lower cool-down to 8 seconds and make the weakness shorter.

“3” – change to 1200 range like Tremor, it is just a cripple, not a knockdown or anything. Lower cool-down to 10 seconds. You could also make this a projectile finisher, however that would make it reflect-able so I don’t know.

“4” – completely change the skill to something else, perhaps a spin attack that does a lot of damage, this would be satisfying. Spinning around and moving with a giant hammer really does sound fun though. Lower cool-down to 15 seconds. Perhaps you could switch ‘4’ and ‘3’ and make ‘4’ the cripple attack, and ‘3’ the spin attack? (Just Ideas!)

“5” – Make it a lot faster, make it cleave, that is all. Lower cool-down to 25 seconds, you could also make it a blast finisher as well

“Burst” – Just increase the range to 900.

wads.5730:

this issue with an overabundance of hammer trains in wvw stems from the stagnant meta, and lack of innovation. less so from game balance.

people run hammer trains because it’s easy, and organizing an counter is hard. but the current game allows for hammer trains to be countered without running a hammer train yourself.

Hmm. Please tell me how to counter a well-organized top melee train team. If you do not wish to discuss it publicly, you can send me a private message. I have really honestly spent couple of hundreds of hours trying to invent a counter and we have been theory crafting with our guild mates about it. So far we come up with the following:

1. Have a larger melee train (aka winning by numbers)
2. Surprise attack with another melee train (surprise is huge advantage)
3. Surprise AoE stun and CC their staff elementalists and necromancers (their weakest link, but even this requires a melee front line)
4. Massive amount of boon removal (but even this requires melee train front line)

The conclusion is that countering a really good melee train, you need at least some sized another melee train. This just underlines how incredibly powerful they are. I admit we haven’t yet tried running like 10+ necromancers (I doubt we could summon so many necromancers from our guild with full ascended gear and everything).

I hope I won’t get flamed with my post. A lot of people, who play WvWvW, have never met a really good melee train. I am talking now about team which can cut through enemy zergs like knife cuts melted butter. When the best EU guild, Red Guard [RG], went to play on NA servers, it face rolled everything. I have personally played against (or sometimes been on the same server) with most of the guilds on this list:

http://www.gw2gvg.com/

Out of all the top guilds in EU, Melenya [Mya] is the least melee heavy. Pity I have only faced them in one match up and they transferred to another server (Piken), so I was able to observe them in game for so short time. Mya uses more ranged strategies than other top teams I have seen, but even they use the hammer melee front line.

So what is the counter to a really well organized hammer melee train without using hammer warriors yourself?

PS. Daecollo’s suggestions are over the top like usual. Hammer burst 900 range <- huh!!

You forget to mention one small detail. Core and majority of melee train is guardians, not warriors. And warriors here primarily for hammer CC, not for hammer damage. So I do not understand what kind of “potentially dangerously OP hammer” you are talking about.

Rednik.3809:

You forget to mention one small detail. Core and majority of melee train is guardians, not warriors. And warriors here primarily for hammer CC, not for hammer damage. So I do not understand what kind of “potentially dangerously OP hammer” you are talking about.

Greetings to an Ex- Desolation guild!

Here in EU the most effective melee train has slightly more hammer warriors than guardians e.g. 5 hammer warriors per let’s say 4 guardians. Anycase setup varies per guild. But I admit both are very common professions indeed. Guardians compete with warriors and thieves as the most common WvWvW profession. And none of them need any serious buffs for WvWvW.

Please don’t make the meta even more distorted than it already is!

PS. Warrior is my 2nd most played profession. Almost 400 hours on it. Full ascended + exo set (actually several set of weapons, trinkets etc).

The EU meta is funny. I would much rather fight the “Warrior Hammer Zergs” then the Blind Thief + Guardian Zergs we have here.

Rednik.3809:

You forget to mention one small detail. Core and majority of melee train is guardians, not warriors. And warriors here primarily for hammer CC, not for hammer damage. So I do not understand what kind of “potentially dangerously OP hammer” you are talking about.

He doesn’t want our weapon skills balanced as usual, it is ok if the hammer stinks even though my ideas only fix the weapon skills to make them balanced with our other weapons skills.

I would be pretty happy with a Hammer animations sped up, cleaving Backbreaker, and moving Staggering Blow. Maybe a range increase on Hammer Shock. That’s all I’m asking for and I think that’s pretty reasonable.

My thoughts are as follows:

2. This attack should be slightly faster.

3. What if this was unblockable/unevadable? Its a shockwave along the GROUND, that hits everything, regardless of you holding a shield at shoulder height or rolling along said ground.

4. Make staggering blow mobile, OR caster much faster, OR increase the radius/knockback. It could probably use a CD reduction from 20 to 16 or so in addition to any of those options.

5. I think it should simply hit/knockdown up to 3 people now. Animation and cooldown can remain high. So many times does it end up “hitting” that downed player, or pet, or turret, or wrong person, because of a cluster/stack, etc.

F1: Can we please, please, please, fix the bugs associated with Earthshaker??
-The vertical axis part really is fail, and I end up slamming the air uselessly instead of the downward sloping ramp im on

-Theres a delay before each use, thats seemingly random. It’s between roughly 1/2 a second to 1 full second of a second. During that time, you cannot move, and you’re left standing still like an idiot. By the time it finally goes off, your target has often simply moved out of the area, blocked, blinded you, or had so much time to dodge that it’ll never land.

-A lot of times (often because of the long random delay, and the leap animation) Earthshaker will get interrupted. When it does, you get the full cooldown.

The problem is that hammer is already one of the most OP weapons in WvW. It would be tough to improve it in PvE or PvP without making it crazy in WvW.

style.6173:

The problem is that hammer is already one of the most OP weapons in WvW. It would be tough to improve it in PvE or PvP without making it crazy in WvW.

Nothing we asked for improves what makes it dangerous in WvWvW Earthshaker, we asked for a faster recovery speed of attacks and ‘5’ to cleave like maces ‘5’, and a fix to staggering blow to not suck. Please read the entire thread before posting.

Thank you.

style.6173:

The problem is that hammer is already one of the most OP weapons in WvW. It would be tough to improve it in PvE or PvP without making it crazy in WvW.

The main reason it’s strong in WvW is because of Earthshaker. Yeah, Earthshaker is fantastic when no one sees it coming during a clusterfrack. Also most WvW battles are in places that dont trigger its glitchy vertical axis issues.

No one here has really suggested buffing Earthshaker (I just suggested fixing its delay/vertical glithes), and not many of the other changes people have asked for would change it’s performance in WvW.

Dand.8231:

style.6173:

The problem is that hammer is already one of the most OP weapons in WvW. It would be tough to improve it in PvE or PvP without making it crazy in WvW.

The main reason it’s strong in WvW is because of Earthshaker. Yeah, Earthshaker is fantastic when no one sees it coming during a clusterfrack. Also most WvW battles are in places that dont trigger its glitchy vertical axis issues.

No one here has really suggested buffing Earthshaker (I just suggested fixing its delay/vertical glithes), and not many of the other changes people have asked for would change it’s performance in WvW.

Yes, I don’t mind not touching earthshaker, its the 1-5 skills I want worked on.

Less Delay/No Root/less pushback skills (Its hard getting into melee, and our skills help the enemy get away?)

My take on Hammer is that it has 1 great skill that is glued to a subpar at best skill bar. My suggestion.

Auto attack chain-The final chain should trigger a blast finish. The auto chain offers nothing proportionate to the amount of flaws it has, weak damage, slow attacks and highly telegraphed. Nobody complains about the auto protection+light field on the guardian hammer so this skill should be balanced in comparison.

Skill 2- Too slow and outdated. The skill is too easily avoidable and even if it connects, it does marginal damage and the weakness is cleansed. The skill should be removed to make room for another better designed skill.

Skill 3- Too buggy, cripple is too short. Would also recommend replacing this skill. The only reason people use this skill is when they get tired of auto attacking or to tag an enemy to stop them from using waypoints or leaving combat.

Skill 4-Badly designed. Far to telegraphed, clunky, immobilizes you and puts you in a worse off position. As a warrior you want to stay on your target, not move them away.

Skill 5-Just a bad skill in general. This attack animation should be 50% faster and should be AoE stun for better synergy with traits.

I wish they would look at the hammer!

Mosharn.8357:

Staggering blow needs a huge redoning. It could be redone to the attack the champion of heavy hammer does.

+1
On the other hand its a copy-paste animation of gs whirl, so its could use evade frame as well.

With regards to WvW this seems like a latency issue… In tpvp there is NO NEED to buff hammer.

Hammer is VERY STRONG in the right hands as it stands, if you made it easier then anyone could run it. And the weakness is still useful (otherwise the likes of lich form would be an insta win).
You know I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t believe this.

Hammer is fine, just practise it/learn enemy frames. I’ll happily show you the ropes when I get back to playing.

/signed the original (tpvp) hammer warrior.

+1 phaeton
i’m pvp hammer warrior in spvp/wvw since the launch of this game, and it’s the slow animation of the hammer that make it balanced, you have to read your opponent move to effectivly hitting him. If you make it easy to use hammer would be OP as hell.

Phaeton+Kazuno: I’m going to have to disagree with you here.

See, the hammer being both heavily telepgraphed , AND slow, means that there is a low skill cap on its use, and a high skill cap to counter it.

Any half decent player who dodges wisely can literally neuter this weapon. There are only two truly dangerous skills, F1 and #5. Dodge those, and that hammer warrior is a free kill. CD for 5 is 30s, and CD for F1 is roughly 10. It can be shortened, but hammer is slow to build up adrenaline which tends to mean its actually more like 15s or so.

Basically dodge a highly telegraphed Earthshaker every 10-15s, and dodge a highly telepgraphed #5 Backbreak every 30s, and you can win without breaking a sweat. And for those times you do screw up, there are teleports, stunbreaks, stability, etc.

I’ll say it again for emphasis: There is a low skill cap on its use, and a high skill cap on its counter

Dand.8231:

Phaeton+Kazuno: I’m going to have to disagree with you here.

See, the hammer being both heavily telepgraphed , AND slow, means that there is a low skill cap on its use, and a high skill cap to counter it.

Any half decent player who dodges wisely can literally neuter this weapon. There are only two truly dangerous skills, F1 and #5. Dodge those, and that hammer warrior is a free kill. CD for 5 is 30s, and CD for F1 is roughly 10. It can be shortened, but hammer is slow to build up adrenaline which tends to mean its actually more like 15s or so.

Basically dodge a highly telegraphed Earthshaker every 10-15s, and dodge a highly telepgraphed #5 Backbreak every 30s, and you can win without breaking a sweat. And for those times you do screw up, there are teleports, stunbreaks, stability, etc.

I’ll say it again for emphasis: There is a low skill cap on its use, and a high skill cap on its counter

Well I’ll have to put some vids up when I start up again proper. You clearly have never faced a decent hammer warrior.

Lol dont think that dodging F1 and #5 of a hammer make you win the fight against the hammer warrior.

Kazuno.9218:

Lol dont think that dodging F1 and #5 of a hammer make you win the fight against the hammer warrior.

The auto-damage of the hammer isn’t anything amazing. #2 is somewhat easy to evade but not a game changer even when it lands, #3 is fast and fairly decent but its not going to win fights, and #4 is cake to evade.

Phaeton.9582:

Well I’ll have to put some vids up when I start up again proper. You clearly have never faced a decent hammer warrior.

By all means, I’d like to see how a pro hammer wielder, handles a zerker build pro, who can evade earthshaker or backbreaker 95% of the time.

Dont get me wrong, F1 and #5 are both good when they land, but they’re easily avoided by good players, and there doesn’t seem to be much you can do to “hide” either one. Backbreaker has a rather obvious animation, and Earthshaker seems to self-root me for about 1-1.5 seconds upon casting, before leaping quite obviously to the target area for an overhead smash.

Like I posted above, I feel like the lag-selfroot-delay part is also a bug of some kind. And half the time my target has unknowingly moved out of the targeted area by the time the skill actually activates.

I’m used to the old GW1 hammer warrior. It was the slowest weapon in the game, but it almost ALWAYS was used as the #2 warrior in meta. KD’s were used as important strategic and spiking techniques. HOWEVER, backbreaker in GW1 was a 4 second KD. In GW2 it’s 2 seconds. The mechanics in GW2, obviously, are totally different and it was reduced to MOSTLY a control weapon instead of just another choice of weapon gameplay. Hammer is not what it was to me. IT NEVER was a defensive or control weapon. It was a “kick as many butts as possible” weapon. I begin to wonder who they pulled their game testers from.

just fix the animation/cast lag, before and after, the skills. Ever tried to pick something up after a hammer skill?

silkysoft.6749:

just fix the animation/cast lag, before and after, the skills. Ever tried to pick something up after a hammer skill?

I hate the aftercast…